Program for Leadership and Character featured in The Fabric of Character

How can institutions shape character? Anne Snyder’s The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Supporting Social and Moral Renewal explores that question and highlights Wake Forest as one model of how universities can educate character. Snyder argues that now more than ever, our society needs institutions that will equip its citizens to “navigate life’s vicissitudes with equipoise, courage, hope, and a loving knowledge of the good.”

Snyder features an entire chapter on Wake Forest’s commitment to “educating the whole person” and characterizes the Program for Leadership and Character as pivotal to this mission. Different from most “ethics” initiatives that focus primarily on research, the Program for Leadership and Character aims to “translate that work to the actual formation of student leaders,” as President Hatch notes. The “capacious vision” of the Program, Snyder writes, “emphasizes both individual virtues and community contributions” to make a lasting impact on students and the world.

Along with the Program for Leadership and Character, The Fabric of Character also recognizes the work of Wake Forest’s School of Business, Office of Personal and Career Development, Eudaimonia Institute, and the THRIVE initiative, along with the research on character by Drs. Christian Miller, Will Fleeson, Mike Furr, and Eranda Jayawickreme.

The Fabric of Character was published by the Philanthropy Roundtable, which recently invited Dr. Michael Lamb, Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, to present on the importance of character in higher education at their annual conference last month.

For more information on Snyder’s book, click here.